Last Friday, my family adopted a sweet, little poodle puppy, named Zipper. The foster mother, Sally, had brought him from a Mexico shelter to her own home in Silver Springs, Md. During the home visit on Friday, we talked about
For the Love of Math
How This Book Editor Learned to Like Math
Behind every author is a great editor. And I was dang lucky to have Jennifer Lawler as my editor for Math for Grownups. What I didn’t know was that I’d helped her out, too. Who says English majors can’t do math? Here’s her story: A
Getting Aware of Common Core Standards
Not all of us are parents or teachers, but I’ve long asserted that education is a “public good,” something that each and every one of us should be very, very concerned with. When kids don’t graduate or graduate with poor
Boston Marathon: How FBI profilers use math
We can all agree that the horrific events at Monday’s Boston Marathon sent a chill down our country’s collective spine. The two bombs that exploded have made us afraid and sad and hopeless. One message that seemed to ease many’s
Math Awareness Month: What’s Your Story?
Lots of people make one of two incorrect assumptions about me. I’m a writer, so they initially assume that I don’t have a good relationship with math. And when they find out that I have a degree in math, they assume
That’s So Random: Getting sampling right
On Wednesday, we talked about sample bias, or ways to really screw up the results of a survey or study. So how can researchers avoid this problem? By being random. There are several kinds of samples from simple random samples to
One in a Million: How sample bias affects data
Continuing with our review of basic math skills, let’s take a little look-see at statistics. This field is not only vast (and confusing for many folks) but also hugely important in our daily lives. Just about every single thing we
Smaller Crowds: Calculating Percentage Change
No, I did not have the flu. No, I did not fall off the face of the earth. No, I did not abandon my math-writing career in favor of tightrope walking at the circus. In fact, I have simply been
Finding Percentages and the Numbers That Go With Them
So yesterday, we reviewed some really basic stuff about percentages. Like: 10% is the same thing as 1/10 or 0.1. Easy peasy, right? Well, today it’s time to really put this stuff to work, finding percentages of numbers or the numbers,
Exit Polling: A statistics refresher
Most of you are probably sick to death of Political campaign polls. But these numbers have become a mainstay of the American political process. In other words, we’re stuck with them, so you might as well get used to it —
Why National Polls Don’t Matter: Electoral college math
This post makes me scared. Not because the math is challenging or because I’m worried about the election. I’m afraid of looking partisan or being accused of ideology. (It’s happened before!) But I can’t avoid election math any longer, so
Saving Face: Avoiding performance math
If there’s one thing most folks assume about me, it’s this: That I am some sort of mathmagician, able to solve math problems in a single bound — quickly, in public and with a permanent marker. Nothing could be farther from